Cat's Cycle
by BellatrixLestrangey
Summary: Goretober Day 29: Stabbed. After getting stabbed, Acxa learns that she can't die.


She first learned that she could come back from the dead when Lotor grabbed her by the hair and dragged her into his knife. At first it was a cruel and unnecessary stab to the belly. A stab that had her curled up on the ground clutching her middle as the pain flared up and fanned out. Tears burned at the corners of her eyes. She didn't know what she had done to earn this punishment. He had kicked her onto her back with a harsh, "look at me."

She locked her eyes into him and asked, "what did I do?"

"It's what you didn't do." He had yelled. "You're useless. Entirely useless. This is the fourth time that I have sent you out on a mission only for you to come back and tell me that you have failed."

Acxa winced. "I'm sorry. I'll do better next time."

The way he had chuckled, lord it was horrifying. "Next time!? There won't be a next time, I have a replacement for you already."

She recalls how numb those words had left her. Not that he gave her time to dwell further upon it. His blade came down again and again until she could no longer get her body to move other than a feeble flex of her fingers. Her blood was sticky and uncomfortable as it pooled around her body. Still, Lotor kept bringing the knife down. He did so until her eyes glossed over and her brain stopped.

He left her there.

And she woke there.

Her body still felt cold and her mind was thick with cobwebs of confusion. She was alone in the base, the lights were still out. It must have been a weekend because the place was locked and abandoned.

She recalls vividly, the moment she staggered out of the base and into the street. She had been quite a spectacle, wandering around with a shirt soaked in her own blood and babbling incoherently.

Everything had hurt.

Everything had hurt and still she wandered back to the man who had caused the hurt. She had begged him profusely to take her back, swearing that she was useful. Swearing that, if she can come back from the dead, she was a worthy general.

He had taken her back.

And every time she made a critical error or mission failure, he'd kill her again. It varied time to time, depending on how badly her screw up set him back. Mostly he'd stab her as he had the first time. Other times he'd wrap his hands around her neck. Sometimes he would throw her from the highest point of their spacecraft, onto the floor, where she'd lie broken until he found the heart to carry her to the medical wing and tend to her as though he weren't the one who'd broken her in the first place.

She stands before a full-lenght looking glass, wondering just what she is. Surely only some sort of monster or demon could resurrect this many times. She fixes her eyes on the scar left on her forehead from a bullet. Her 'survival' had been a miracle, Veronica gladly told her as much. But she knows that she hasn't survived at all.

She knows that she survives less and less every time.

When Acxa comes back it is never in full. Each death reaps her of more and more emotion. Veronica questions her often about her stoic demeanor. On the rare occasion that she smiles, Veronica's face lights up and she says that she wishes she would smile more. Acxa wishes the same, but she is so empty and growing emptier still.

Her head still hurts terribly from where the bullet has ravaged it. The painkillers have no effect and she doesn't like taking them. She grips her pounding head and sinks to the bathroom floor. She has seemingly eternal life, but more than anything she wants to stay dead.

She finds it hard to even cry these days, but crying comes easier than laughing. For some reason the negative emotions always do. She must be terribly sad because she cries almost freely.

That is how Veronica finds her, curled up on the bathroom floor clutching her head and crying. The human lifts her into her arms and rubs her back. "What's wrong?"

Acxa wipes at her eyes and simply mutters, "it hurts."

Veronica moves a sweep of Acxa's hair out of her face and kisses the scar. "You'll heal up soon and it won't hurt so bad."

Acxa hugs her very tightly. She can't hold onto her life, but she can hold onto Veronica and so she does. She must love Veronica very much, because, despite dying well over twelve times, she can feel that love very intensely.

She clings to the feeling with everything she has.


End file.
